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Network Graphs can help us see and measure relationships and connections between people, places, and things over time. This can be expressed as identifying, measuring and understanding process flows, the mix of products in shopping carts, social network and email traffic, affinities and interests people share (or don’t share), and the “hierarchies of influence” in business and / or social systems by identifying who or what triggers events, and the impacts they have on others.

Today’s post describes how you can build Network Graphs using Tableau Software versions 6 or 7, including a detailed how-to tutorial and some information on the background of Network Theory.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

How to transform Shape Files into Microsoft Excel Choropleth Maps – including 2 Maps of Germany by Zip Codes

On several occasions I thought (and stated) that I already published everything I have to say about Choropleth Maps with Excel.

Having said that, it seems as if “the ghosts I called I can’t get rid of now”. Recently someone asked me if I could provide an Excel Choropleth Map of Germany by zip codes. Careless and stupid boy I am, I answered “sure this is no problem”. What a misjudgment.

If you followed my previous Excel Choropleth Map articles, you know that it takes either an Enhanced Metafile of the map you can ungroup in Excel to get the shapes or at least an SVG file to transform it to an EMF file using e.g. Inkscape.

And here is the roadblock I encountered: I simply couldn’t find a map of Germany by zip codes in one of the required formats. All I could find were ESRI shape files. After hours of searching for EMF and SVG files, I gave up, simply reversed my thinking and looked for a tool to convert shape files into SVG. 5 minutes later I had the solution.

Today’s post describes how to use Indiemapper, a free online tool, to transform shape files into SVG which can then be used for Microsoft Excel Choropleth Maps in the well-known way.